Model Railroading > Walthers/Shinohara Turnouts

Date: 10/27/10 19:35Walthers/Shinohara Turnouts
Author: jwsquires

I am still trying to determine whether these are "all-Live" or "Power Routing." I have installed Walthers and Shinohara (all labelled as DCC compatible/friendly) of these (both curved and straight) and they work fine with a B&M consolidated. However, when I use a small engine such as a 4-4-0, stalling is almost universal. I am using Tortoise switch machines and wonder if simply powering the frog will be sufficient. So two questions:
What type of a switch is is this vis-a-vis the power classification and will just powering the frog using the Tortoise solve the problem?

Jim - the actual frog is very small - no way to get a wire on it to power it. The rails are always live - not power routed. Hard to believe that the frog is the cause of your stalling. Suggest you do a continuity test on all rails. We have occasionally come across a Walthers/Shinohara DCC-Ready that has missing internal(underside) cross-connections - and that would require a drop on the offending rail to correct. All you need is a drop on each stockrail if the internal connections are good.

Jim, the older Walthers/Shinohara switches were power routing and the new ones are not. The old ones had hot frogs powered by the direction of the switchpoints and the new "DCC" switches have dead frogs. I have sveral of these on my layout and share your problem where short wheelbase engines will stall on the frog at slow speed. With a hot 40 amp iron, drill a tiny hole to accept a 22g wire and quickly flux and solder this wire to the frog and lead it down under the layout via a hole drilled. Attach this to your switch motor (see their instructions for which terminal to use) and you should have no more problems!

Almost all of the switches on my layout are either regular Shinohara or Peco and are not "DCC friendly." I've had no problems with them working with DCC, The secret is in gapping at the right spots and then using Tortoise switch machines' built in power routing switching to power the frogs depending on the direction the switch is thrown. Most of my track was laid before DCC came on the scene and I saw no reason to change.

For instance, I have 4 old style code 83 Shinohara double slips that work just fine with DCC and power routing/frog power through Tortoise machines. "DCC friendly" switches give you a dead frog that really can be a problem at times. For instance, I hve a W&R gas electric that has two relatively short trucks and gets power from one side of the front truck and the other side of the rear truck. It would stall every time on a DCC friendly turnout until I powered the frog.

I had a big bunch of old Shinohara (Price tag said $2.95) that I have converted to DCC and powered the frog. I'm using them in conjuction with ME (which I had to finish making them DCC friendly) and handlaid curved, etc. They all work fine once I put machines (Bullfrog) on them and powered the frog. Once in a great while something will still hit the frog just right and stall but they are good turnouts. I wish I could remember the web site where it covers all of this.

I have had several of the DCC friendly ones fail over the years because the underside cross-wiring failed. A small jumper solved the problem. But they have dead frogs, so a small 0-4-0 or 4-4-0 will stall.